Chaos Theory
by Abydosorphan
Summary: McKay and Zelenka pull triple shifts to solve a problem in preparation for a Wraith attack.
_If a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, will it set off a tornado in Texas?_

The college-level analogy ran through McKay's head, would the principles of chaotic dynamics even be remotely similar if you swapped out the galaxy in which the event took place? If the flapping wings of the butterfly could represent a small change in the initial condition of the system, which would cause a chain of events leading up to large-scale phenomena how much would the dynamics change if the planet - and therefore all of the physics within the system - changed? The galaxy? The universe?

If the determination of whether a butterfly had or had not flapped its wings could alter the trajectory of a system in such a vast manner as to cause, or not cause, a tornado; the possibilities were truely endless.

He really should write a book on it some day.

Of course that would be a day when some other nemesis wasn't trying to blow Atlantis out of the sky, or water, or where ever they currently resided at the time. It was really getting quite tiresome. If it wasn't the Genii, it was the Wraith. If not the Wraith, the Asurans. If not the Asurans, then... someone else.

"Zkurvysyne!"

The sound of Zelenka's curse pulled him from his thoughts. He still had no idea what the other man said half the time - which was enough to royally piss him off alone - but the fact that it generally signaled yet another failure only annoyed him more.

"Go."

"I beg your pardon?"

Rodney rolled his eyes as he stood from his computer, rubbing the back of his hand across his forehead. "Just go. You're obviously not helping. I'll handle this myself."

"You'll handle this yourself," Radek continued to type away at his keyboard, "if you could really handle this yourself you would have solved it already rather than have the entire expedition pulling triple shifts trying to solve the issue before the Hive ship gets here." He looked up, met Rodney's eyes and then rolled his own. "Zavri tlamu, hlavoun."

"I resent that." Rodney didn't have the foggiest idea what Zelenka had said, but he knew the tone, and he didn't like it. Radek muttered something that Rodney couldn't make out and caused him to question all of the reasons he had for letting the incredibly abrasive man tag along.

Radek's ideas were only marginally better than those of your average doctoral student. He wasn't the kind of person to practice _real_ science. He was the kind who would pick up a piece of new and alien technology and rather than waiting to understand anything about what he was doing would mash on the keyboard and hope that _something_ good would happen and he wouldn't destroy the entire universe in the mix of it all.

"Dr. Fumbles McStupid strikes again."

"Oh, I see how it is. McKay tries this. McKay tries that. It works or it doesn't and that's trial and error. Zelenka tries this and it doesn't work so let's stop everything and instead of trying to work _together_ and try to fix it, we'll waste time and berate him continuously." Radek huffed and moved from his computer to one of the terminals across the room.

"I'm actually perfectly capable of doing that at the same time, no need to 'waste time' and concentrate on only one."

"Good. Maybe we could actually get something productive done then, rather that just continue to go through sleep deprivation with nothing to show for it." The mumbled non-English continued as background noise while Rodney stared in Zelenka's direction.

There had to be other assistants out there. There had to be _better_ assistants out there. What had possessed him to select Zalenka for the expedition?

 _You turn all the lead sleeping in my head to gold_

He had no idea where the quote that flittered through his mind had come from or, quite frankly, what it had to do with his selection process for an assitant or any position on the expedition.

"Excuse me?"

Rodney looked up, his eyes meeting Zalenka's, and a very confused feeling running through him. "What?"

"Turning lead to gold? What does alchemy have to do with our current predicament?"

Shit.

He'd said that out loud?

"Oh, come on, don't even try to play that dense. Alchemy has _nothing_ to do with it. It was more of an analogy. Making something appear to be something it's not kind of thing." Yeah, that totally made sense. In fact, that was brilliant. Why hadn't he thought of it before?

Zelenka was looking at him, totally unconvinced.

"It shouldn't be difficult, either. All we need to do is re-modulate the shield harmonics to mask the appearance of the city so that they can't see us."

"It won't work."

"Well, I don't see you suggesting anything, so rather than shoot down my idea before we've even tried it why don't you shut up and help."

Zelenka's eyes kindled with barely repressed emotion. "Fine. But I'm standing by my original hypothesis. It won't work." The last sentence had been slowly enunciated so that there would be no room for question.

"FINE! Why do you insist that it won't work?"

"We've done it before. I really do not think that the Wraith are so primitive as to forget that and not figure things out."

Well, shit, that wasn't good. The annoying man was barely able to function in a fully English arena, but he was right. How could he have overlooked that fact?

Occasionally, Zelenka _did_ serve a purpose or two. And if he was really going to be honest with himself, from time to time he did enjoy the banter - even if his opponent was vastly inferior to his own intellect. Maybe Sheppard was right and they should just make out and get it over with. If they managed to survive this one, maybe he'd actually get around to doing something about that.

"Well... then... let's think of something else."


End file.
